The Patriot Viper VPN100 is a very competitive SSD during its initial release and while time has passed the performance to Gen4 drives, the Viper VPN100 is still a capable drive especially if you can find it in lower prices than before. A Reddit user recently discovered that his Patriot Viper VPN100 was not the same spec as listed in the original spec sheet.
The Reddit post details his VPN100 2TB comes equipped with Phison E12S and 512MB of DRAM against the initially advertised Phison E12 with 2GB of DRAM. That large DRAM reduction would immediately alarm anyone and with the recent issues with ADATA and their lack of response thereof. I actually brought this to my rep’s attention a few days after the Reddit posting. Apparently, the complaint has not reached the Taiwanese office of Patriot until then.
Our Patriot rep advised she’ll check on it and after a few days has reverted with the statement below:
We at Patriot would like to address the current situation surrounding our Viper VPN100 M.2 solid state drive. We have become aware that some customers have noted the reduction in cache on the VPN100 SSD. Over the past few days we have taken time to investigate this matter thoroughly internally and listen to the feedback generated online.
Due to the ongoing fab shortages affecting the global IC supply chain, in 2020 Patriot opted to utilize the Phison E12S controller in addition to the Phison E12 for the full VPN100 series (256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB). We confirm this is the only Viper SSD series affected. The E12S uses less cache but offers the same performance as the E12 controller because it is produced using the latest fab process and innovative firmware development. As an advanced version of the E12 controller, Patriot still guarantees that the VPN100 using the E12S will hit the same performance specs in sequential read/write, and random IOPS, and same endurance limits (sans Chia mining) as the VPN100 using the original E12 controller. Please see the comparison of performances below:
However, we do not deny that when doing so, we have failed to update our information sheets that are available online for public viewing and reference respectively, this should have been performed immediately. For this we apologize and take responsibility for any inconveniences caused to all partners and customers. Any consumer that has any questions or concerns regarding their VPN100 solution with E12S controller is free to get in touch with our Customer Service department at:
Going forward, we commit to our information sheets and website reflecting the actual available product specifications at all times.
We are excited to be introducing a new Viper Gen3 x4 m.2 SSD solution launching in Q4 2021 that will replace the VPN100 and hope it will continue to please hardware enthusiasts worldwide and meet their standards.
It has been a pleasure being a part of the IT hardware community for the past 35 years and we hope to continuously bring out ground-breaking products in a time where technology is ever-evolving.
Sincerely,
Patriot Memory, Inc.
Patriot states that performance is within advertised targets and that with global semiconductor shortages have forced the changes to the VPN100. While performance is easy to verify, Patriot does seem to have changed the endurance rating as the Phison E12S 2TB VPN100 is only rated for 900TBW versus 3115TBW on the original VPN100. We will be reaching out to Patriot to confirm this matter.
We’ll update as this story develops.
